True confession time here. I’ve been in a long-term relationship with Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookies for more than forty years. As I’m writing this I’ve got a shiny foil sleeve of Thin Mints on my desk that I’m slowly savoring. The crunch of the wafer cookie loaded with minty goodness and covered in a yummy chocolate coating is snacking nirvana.
My goal right now is to not eat the entire sleeve but I’m afraid I’m five cookies away from that not happening. The pull of the Thin Mint is just that mighty. It’s my siren song.
This weakness for Thin Mints started when I was child and selling Girl Scout cookies for the first time. At our troop meeting the leader had the awesome suggestion that to be better at selling we needed to taste all the cookies.
Needless to say, I was all in and with extreme pleasure devoured Lemon Crème, Peanut Butter Patties, and Savannahs as fast as a I could. Then a defining moment happened in my life. The Girl Scout leader asked me I wanted to try a Thin Mint.
I picked up the chocolate cookie that at first glance is unassuming. There’s no crème filling, no peanut butter, coconut or chocolate chips peeking out. It’s just a rather smallish cookie with a dull chocolaty finish. But, oh my, when I took my first bite I was hooked. My love affair had begun.
When I hit the streets to sell cookies, by knocking on the doors of complete strangers, by myself, with no parent or older sibling standing guard on the sidewalk because this was life in the 70s, I was preaching the Thin Mint gospel.
If someone didn’t order a box I would urge them to dedicate another dollar (the amount of box of Girl Scout cookies cost in 1974) to the wonder that is the Thin Mint. My sales pitch was so powerful that I sold the most boxes of Thin Mints in my entire Girl Scout Council.
The next year the Girl Scout cookie sale was one of sheer joy. My mother was the cookie mom. This meant all the boxes of Girl Scout cookies for several troops were sent to our house. Our living room was piled high with cases of cookie goodness.
This turned out to be a bit of a problem for me and was perhaps when a fondness for the cookie took an ugly turn to addiction. I covertly opened up a case of Thin Mint cookies, took the boxes to my room, hid them and then at night I would secretly eat Thin Mint after Thin Mint.
As you have probably guessed this did not turn out well. Most especially when my mother discovered the escapade of sheer gluttony I had embarked on.
One would think this shameful episode would have been the wake-up call I needed to stop with my Thin Mint dependency. But no, here I am decades later with six boxes of Thin Mints hidden in my laundry room and three sleeves of cookies in my freezer concealed under a large bag of frozen Tortellini just to make sure no one in my family can find them and, gasp, eat my secret stash.
I wish I could give up the cookie, but I just took another bite of a Thin Mint and I can in all honesty say I don’t see that ever happening. But being a Thin Mint optimist, I prefer to look on the bright side – that my cookie addiction is helping fund the Girl Scouts and that I only buy Thin Mints once a year.
I’ll celebrate that by eating another cookie.
